Teen Interns Get a Taste of Transportation

On a bright summer day in early August, a group of high school students embarked on a tour of the Bay Area. While many of the stops were familiar class-trip fare — Fisherman’s Wharf, the Ferry Building, Jack London Square — the journey was anything but ordinary.

Over the course of the day, students were treated to two rides on BART, a jaunt on the Oakland Broadway free shuttle, a ferry across the Bay, a trip on the historic F-line trolley and last but certainly not least, a ride on the famed San Francisco cable cars.

After all, there are far more exciting ways to travel the Bay Area than aboard a big yellow bus.

“We wanted to expose the students to as many forms of transportation as possible,” explained Michelle Tan, coordinator of MTC’s High School Internship Program. The summer program places 16- to 19-year-old students in transportation agencies throughout the Bay Area, where they gain valuable experience in transportation engineering, finance, communications and design.

The tour provided hands-on exposure to the inner-workings of the Bay Area’s transportation network, beginning with an insider peek at the Caltrans Transportation Management Center (TMC) in downtown Oakland. At this central nervous system of the roadway network, engineers and technicians monitor highway conditions around the clock on massive video panels, coordinating construction activity, roadway advisories and incident management in real-time.

The VIP treatment continued at the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco, where the interns toured the operations control booth and ventured into the tunnels where the massive cables feed into the ground. A stop at the San Francisco Railway Museum rounded out the day with historical facts and memorabilia from San Francisco’s other historic railway — the F-line streetcar.

As young transportation enthusiasts, many of the interns were familiar with the different transit systems utilized throughout the day. In fact, several of them directly supported their day-to-day operations, or the road networks upon which they depend, as part of their summer internships.

Simon Huang, a recent graduate of Santa Clara High School, was part of a team that inspects roads to determine those most in need of maintenance. “It’s a lot of fun — we’re always outdoors, driving around different parts of the Bay,” he said during the tour. Simon will be majoring in Environmental Engineering at UC Riverside this fall.

David Rosenberg, a recent graduate of Buckingham Charter Magnet High School in Vacaville, will be a freshman at UC Santa Cruz. This summer he helped the city of Vacaville make preparations for modifications to its bus network. He also investigated potential new revenue sources such as TV monitors and bus wraps. “It’s been a really interesting place to work,” he said.

Stefan Martinez, a senior at The Urban School in San Francisco, wrote several human-interest stories for BART. “My role is to add color — fun feature articles — to BART’s website. It’s nice to be able to pitch stories and learn things about the agency and the city I didn’t know before,” he said.

In a similar vein, Bo Yan Moran, who will be a senior at Lick Wilmerding High School in San Francisco this fall, helped craft communications strategy at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, based in San Francisco. One of her research projects involves finding ways to present statistics on greenhouse gas emissions.

“By making statistics personal and humanizing the issue,” she noted, “you can help inspire people to change their ways.”

As a result of their experiences, some of the interns expressed a desire to pursue a career in transportation further down the road.

“Being a part of this program opened my eyes to becoming an engineer working in the public sector,” said Michael Gao, a recent graduate of Mills High School in Millbrae who interned with the city of San Bruno’s Public Services department this summer. “It’s something I truly have a passion for.” Michael will be majoring in civil and/or environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Nicholas Defazio, a recent graduate of Benicia High School who interned with the Solano Transportation Authority, will be enrolling at a vocational school for train conductors this fall.

“I liked working for Solano a lot. It’s a close-knit office, and I got to help with the Safe Routes to School program. But I’m not a big political person. The program helped clarify what I want to do — become a certified train conductor — and I learned a lot about office work in the process,” he said.

Samantha Sipin will be a senior at Vanden High School and also worked for the Solano Transportation Authority. While unsure if she wants to go into a transportation-related field, she is more likely to take public transit as a result of her internship.

“Being exposed to this field really showed me how important public transportation is. I’m much more likely to use transit now, and I know who to ask for information.”

A total of 39 students participated in the 8-week internship program this summer. MTC’s Minority Citizens Advisory Committee conceived the program eleven years ago to encourage young people to consider a career in the field of transportation.  

— Craig Raphael